Over the past ten years, the mass production of storage devices has become both increasingly large in scale and increasingly competitive. The combination of aggressive computer upgrade schedules, increased storage demands driven by media applications, and the opening of foreign markets to computer sales has driven up the size and scale of storage device production. However, at the same time, increased competition has driven down the cost of computer components such as storage devices.
While once used primarily in personal and enterprise computers that were stored in fixed locations and moderate temperatures, hard drives are now appearing in a wide range of portable devices, such as laptop computers, personal data assistants, personal media players, and digital camcorders. Such applications often subject the hard drives to higher shock levels and more adverse temperatures than traditional applications. While it is possible to configure a hard drive to be more resilient to environmental effects, doing so can adversely affect performance. What is needed is a means for configuring hard drives for adverse environmental effects while still maintaining high performance.